Prado owner saves serious buck with biodiesel

Andy le May (left) and William Jantjies fill up a Toyota Prado
with bio-diesel boiled up from used cooking oil in the
Kalahari desert.

THE fastest man on an electric scooter in South Africa, Andy le May, used a Prado to lug about the electric vehicles that he sells.

He fills the big fuel-guzzling Toyota with bio-diesel.

After the trip he took to Hakskeenpan in the Northern Cape to go win himself that title as the fastest electric scooter rider in SA — albeit for lack of competition, he told Witness Wheels what it is like to pull a heavy trailer with fuel made from recycled cooking oil.

The bio-diesel is filtered and boiled up by Craig and Bettina Waterman at green-diesel in Cape Town.

Le May had been using bio-diesel in the Prado for the last two years and Craig and Bettina deliver a drum to his house when he need it.

He said apart from being more environmentally friendly, bio-diesel in the Cape is also about R1 cheaper per litre.

Recalling the trip to the Eco Speed Week, he said the weather was ferocious, with headwinds gusting up to 50 km/h, and it was not the usual plain sailing on his cooking oil diesel.

“We were carrying the aerodynamic golf cart, two scooters and all the bio-diesel for the journey in two green drums.

“With all the weight of the trailer and that headwind it was hard going, but as we headed north the sun rose and the weather gradually got better.

“However, worryingly, we had some problems with the engine missing under high load, especially going up the passes where we were down to first and second gear and I had to feather the throttle to stop it from getting too un­even and the engine diagnostic light from coming on.

“It felt like fuel starvation and I had experienced something very similar to this on a long trip we did recently around SA.

“The last time it happened we went to Toyota in Cape Town and they had the car for a week and couldn’t find anything wrong with it. We had the car serviced and all seemed to be OK again.

He suspected it was the diesel filter.

From what Le May has learned, modern diesel filters clog up a bit when they get their first dose of bio-diesel.

He said he was told this is because the different fuel densities tend to lift the dirt in the tank, which then clog the filter.

With fuel having gone up again yesterday, Le May is smiling even broader with the savings he is making, but he cautions that because it is not more profitable to export waste cooking to Europe, chances are the price for bio-fuel will also go up in the near future.